I mean if we're being technical on the relativity, then accelerating at 1g for 24 years would make you surpass the speed of light, which is not only impossible but then your trip time would be infinite with respect to the planetary reference frame... And that's just too long.

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From your subjective point of view it would seem like you are going faster than light, but to everyone else your acceleration would level of at 99.9% of the speed of light. You never actually reach the speed of light but your perception of the rate that time passes has changed so it seems so.

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I mean if we're being technical on the relativity, then accelerating at 1g for 24 years would make you surpass the speed of light, which is not only impossible but then your trip time would be infinite with respect to the planetary reference frame... And that's just too long.

I may be remembering this incorrectly but, as you gain more speed, don't you also gain more mass? This would mean that the engines would have add more thrust to move the heavier ship. Eventually, you'd cap out where there simply wasn't enough power to accelerate the increasing mass.

- The Neutron Star reaches our solar system just a half millenia from present day.

- In the end, Humanity has no time to send an expedition to Alioth or make extensive research (at least not better than data gathering from a space telescope like the James Webb one).

- Before the launch of the Arkships, a list including thousands of potentially habitable planets has been finalized the 15th March of the year 2137. As information about each planet was far from being enough detailed to be 100% sure to find an habitable on first try, the list was uploaded in each Arkship AI memory. As an Arkship approach a potentially habitable planet, a short range scan ("short" compared to the size of the galaxy) is made by the AI to see if the planet is indeed compatible with human colonization or not. So while the coordinates of Alioth were known from before the Arkship Launch, the decision of landing on it was made by Aphelia, while approaching the planet. This also implies that Novark passengers don't know where the other Arkships might have landed.

@Smacker:

1) Surprisingly, the atmosphere IS compatible with humans. The similar specs between Earth and Alioth (without terraforming efforts) is nearly miraculous.

2) Cryo-pods and Resurrection nodes are two completely different things: the first preserve the physical body on a long period. The second could possibly resurrect a possibly dead (or recreate a destroyed) physical body.

3) As said in the Lore Bible, the Arkship speed can approach Light speed. There is no other data on the topic as the Arkship engines are undocumented.

@Kurock:

The decisions for the remaining temporary names/placeholders should be announced before the end of the week.

Arkships could host million of people, but how many arkships were launched? Dozens, hundreds?

How many people were saved out of the billion of humans left?

More or less a hundred of Arkships has been launched. An Arkship can roughly host five millions people.

Were the colonists awake during the launch? If yes, for how much time?

Passengers have been cryogenized slightly before the launch: As the space available aboard Arkships was already severely limited to host several millions of people, it would have created an uproar among the population if some significant space was wasted for huge living quarters. You can assume there are some rooms and food storage for emergency situations enabling a few people to survive in case of an accidental awakening... but that wouldn't last years. If the AI fails to solve the situation quickly, then the unfortunate awakened ones might meet a grim ending: death by starvation.

Arkships don't use warp technology, so is their speed sub- or supra-luminic? From what I've gathered we're ~1k parsec away from the closest point Scutum-Centaurus arm, so our Arkship's speed is at least of 0.3c, is that correct? With the time dilatation effect occurring when we approach more and more the Light Speed, isn't the use of cryogenic pods a bit superfluous?

As explained in the Lore Bible, the Arkship speed can approach Light Speed. When we say "approach", it should be read 99,5% (according to the special theory of relativity, the time dilatation effect will be roughly time multiplied by 10. Even for the Arkship passengers, it would be more or less a 1.000 years trip, which still totally justify the use of cryogenic sleep).

What are the topics we shouldn't mention?

Is there a hidden lore or something explaining the incoherence of the IA behavior and why certain technologies were lost?

This question has also its answer in the Lore Bible.

Please read the last part called "Mysteries".

What do you mean by "proto-sentient AI"? Could you expand on that?

"Proto" is to be understood here as primitive. It is meant to have limited sentience, just enough to perform its duties (that cannot be entirely automated in a non-sentient way), but without too much of free will or existential risks associated to the full sentience AI (which was banned). This, at least, was the official story and intent behind the Arkship AIs. Distinguishing between a smart full sentient AI that can fake its proto sentience, and a genuine proto-sentient AI is probably hard.

P.S:

For the temporary names remaining in the Lore Bible, their final replacement will be announced next week.

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* A neutron star actually hitting the sun is vanishingly unlikely, and if it happened, disrupted planetary orbits would be the least of our problems. Basically, the neutron star would accrete a huge amount of gas from the sun and trigger a supernova-like event (a type 1a, for example, is caused by gas accretion onto a white dwarf) plus probable black hole formation. All the planets would basically get turned into plasma, and any object within a couple of lightyears would get cooked by the gamma rays (heck, if you were on Mars you'd get a lethal dose just from the neutrinos -- see https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/)

* A close passage (ie: outer solar system distance) is all that would be needed to disrupt the orbits and render Earth uninhabitable.

I 100% agree with the above and sorry if this has already been stated but I'm new to the Forum and not read all the posts thus far, however upon reading the lore my mind also went to "yeah how likely is a direct collision or even a fly by"..... then I thought..... what if it wasn't an accident? possible space/time manipulation by an as yet undetailed extra terrestrial entities that like to play cosmic pool to wipe out any potential threat from a safe and non combative distance? Possible combat expansion / reason for future server re-sets if the similar were to happen again? Food for thought

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Thanks for this great part of the lore. There is so much to learn in this topic.

I think I spotted an impossible or unclear information about Nanopacks and Resurrection nodes, let me explain :

On 16/11/2016 at 3:26 AM, NQ-Nyzaltar said:

Calabi-Yau Compactification: the science behind CYC has been inexplicably lost in the Arkship archives. It is the technology that powers nanopacks, which are extra small containers (that colonists wear on their suit), capable of amazing volume and weight reductions of almost anything contained in them. All we know is that it seems to work based on the possibility of storing matter within the extra dimensions of space-time allowed by String Theory, inside what is called the Calabi-Yau space. The exact science and understanding behind them has been lost and attempts at reverse engineering have all failed. Due to the limited number of Nanopacks available and their considerable value, further attempts to reverse engineer them are discouraged.

Quantum branching: Quantum Branching is at the heart of the Resurrection Node technology and is based on the “Many Worlds Interpretation” of quantum mechanics. At any moment, in particular when you die violently, several versions of the universe coexist in parallel. Scientists working on EPR pair experiments unexpectedly found a way to instantly switch one universe with another, and in particular to switch the universe where you die with another one where everything would be exactly the same, except that your body position would be inside a Resurrection Node. The amount of matter to switch increases the energy cost of the operation, so RN teleport only the minimal set of mass to get the desired effect, which is... your naked body. A Resurrection Node is paired to your body and cannot be used by somebody else. It will make you virtually immortal, even if natural aging will probably get you out of the loop at some point.

"Calabi-Yau Compactification: the science behind CYC has been inexplicably lost in the Arkship archives"
This imply that you cannot build any more Nanopacks, they are very rare, so if you lose it… you lose it.

"Quantum branching: RN teleport only the minimal set of mass to get the desired effect, which is… your naked body"
You probably said this because you want that dead people lose their inventory. Understandable, but… they lost their Nanopacks too!
So, how could they get them back?

I think you planned to give people back their Nanopacks after their resurrection, because it would be unfair to lose them. (or maybe you planned to incorporate Nanopacks inside players body, so they are restored too)

But you could also say that RN restore your non-naked body with your Nanopacks and clothes, and because the matter stored inside the Nanopacks was in an extra dimension of Calabi-Yau, it's not working the same and you lost everything that was inside.

I'm not sure it would be 100% compatible with what you planned, but it's an idea.

From a Lore point of view, the testing phases including Alpha and Beta stages are considered in the Lore as virtual simulation run by Aphelia while the Alpha Team members are asleep (note: Pre-Alpha stage is not considered as part of the Lore)

The in-game money will the “Quanta” (one Quanta, several Quantas).

“Novean” is the term to name a passenger of the Arkship “Novark”.

P.S: regarding potential inconsistency between Nanopack rarity and the way a Player Character is resurrected, it's possible we will go with the solution "By naked, we mean, everything else than what you had before you leaving the Arkship". However, this is still in discussion. We'll keep you informed about the final decision

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"The lore bible makes reference to the change in the importance of money as a currency and object as wealth. Instead, it implies:

On ‎16‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 6:26 AM, NQ-Nyzaltar said:

Work as we know it has long disappeared, and social influence has replaced money as the currency of value. People do not “work” anymore, they have “activities” that can get them socially recognized. Money is still used, via a Universal Revenue, mainly as a way to control the scarcity in production, and balance the availability of goods against their rarity.

I know the lore is changing behind the scenes, but this is quite in contrast to the characteristic of money. Money is used to control the market forces, thus determining in part supply and demand. According to the lore, some form of 'social currency/influence' dictates the value of the person and thus his influence.

Can units of the Universal Revenue be used to purchase units of social influence and vice-versa?

If not, how do both co-exist?

What is the name of this social 'currency'?

What kind of activities increase the social influence (the currency of value) and what impact does it have on the value of the U2?

When does the name change from U2 to Quanta exactly?

Is there a way to monopolise these forms of social influence?

If the lore bible simply infers that social influence is more important than money, it's not very much different than the case today. If, however, social influence is gained by activities different from what exists presently, and possesses a separate value on its own; I'd like to know more about the activities, the social influence and its limits.

Cheers.

"

Edited March 5, 2018 by Vyz EjstuI added a few more questions.

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If nanopacks, as you say, are incredibly rare, what is to stop them from being stolen from travelers and sold in a market as a valuable trade commodity? If this is the case, then shouldn't we have a way to store our items without the use of a nanopack?

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When the Novark accelerates to past light speed, wouldn't it be constantly bombarded with particles from the space dust and gas? Can kyrium contain this much bombardment before disintigrating? The only warp drive that can travel faster than light is known as the Alcubierre warp drive, proposed by Miguel Alcubierre, which bends the fabric of space time to make distances contract closer together, resulting in a kind of bubble. There are many problems that could theoretically occur as a result of this drive. 1) Particles could be swept up along the path of this bubble, resulting in possible high energy release towards a particular planet, annihilating said planet, or doing extreme damage to this planet without destroying it. Another problem is the survivability of the inside of the bubble, which is completely cut because of too much Hawking radiation. Also, the ship's crew, or in this case A.I., would not be able to control the ship because it would be going too fast. So, in the game lore, could new physics possibly be discovered that could help the probability of this device bring practically used in this timeframe? Thanks,

-Rhino

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Each﻿﻿ Arkship is controlled by a proto-sentient AI that was allowed to be built against the very strong UEF AI ban because it was argued that it would have been ﻿to hazardous to let the fate of humanity rest with dumb automatic machinery that would possibly not be able to react to unexpected situations﻿. While being an exception to the AI ban rule, the onboard AI is still however not allowed to take control of any machinery or robot beside the Arkship itself. The Novark AI is called “Aphelia”.﻿﻿